


Something Human

by GayAsAnArrow



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, but not all, intentionally confounding prose at first, some canonical character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-07-24 23:00:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20022436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GayAsAnArrow/pseuds/GayAsAnArrow
Summary: Before it begins, there are things you must know.In Nibelheim, four years ago, a stubborn trooper and a young god tumbled into the mako together.In Nibelheim, four years ago, there was only one Soldier lying on the floor when the scientist arrives.In Midgar, there is no mysterious figure of Tifa's past at the train station to join the ranks of Avalanche.In the slums, an eco-terrorist falls through Aerith's roof. A stranger who goes by the name Tifa.In the Northern Crater, something wakes the WEAPONS long before their time.In Mideel, as the world ends, two broken creatures wash up on the shores of the lifestream.Out in the world, a smiling man seeks Meteor.Before it begins, it has all already broken.But perhaps one can salvageSomething human





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _[...] hoping to revive something human through uncanny convergences._  
>  — Lesley Wheeler, **Undead Eliot: How “The Waste Land” Sounds Now**

The Northern Crater had stood silent at the top of the world for millennia. Once it had been a place of fire. It had boiled over with the blood of the planet— The boiling rock that had built the world piece by piece. At the crater it had poured, until it created a vast and unforgiving world all its own.  
  
Now the crater was an icy monument to itself. The secrets it held had rested undisturbed for over a thousand years, shrouded in frigid silence and isolation.

A sharp sound caught on the wind, piercing a decades-long quiet. The violent crash of crystal against stone. The wind picked up as if to silence it, but another harsh sound followed. And then another. It was an unearthly hammering that rang through the ice like a tolling bell.

There were no human eyes to witness. But the planet has always been more than human. A vast yellow eye, blanketed beneath the ice, began to open as the hammering crashed through the silence. Crash by crash, the first of the great beasts awakened from slumber.

It had no context for what it saw. For the desperate man gripping a frozen rock in hands bloody from clawing at ice. For the immaculate and inhuman figure enshrined in crystal. For the wordless struggle playing out before its eyes. The man with the yellow hair pounding frozen stone against an impossible crystalline structure. The impassive, immobile figure of an enemy within.

* * *

A moment ago, Cloud thought, bleary, dazed, broken, fragmented—   
A mo— 

A moment ago they were in the lifestream. A moment ag— 

ago they were in the lifestream, togeth-  
-th-

Together. Sephiroth’s hand was tight on his shoulder. His hand clinging to Sephiroth’s neck. Locked together. Yes. Just a moment ago.  
  
He brought the rock down against the crystal, and the impact made his teeth ache. He sucked in a breath past the discomfort, tears freezing in his lashes. From the cold. Was it cold? He couldn’t feel his hands, but he could still hold the stone. Maybe it was just frozen to his fingers. He slammed it down against the crystal again.  
  
Just a moment ago…   
J-  
Jus-

Just a moment ago he was _right there_.

He reached for his voice. To call out for him. Found voice but not words. Not names. Cried out aloud wordlessly, the sound that dragged out of him didn’t sound human.

Just a moment ago… 

The ground shook. No. This… This wasn’t the ground. He looked down. Looked up. Regretted it. The ceiling, the ground, gravity, _his home, his life up in smoke, all in smoke, everything…_

He fixed his eyes on Sephiroth. Sephiroth frozen in crystal. Distant and untouchable but right in front of him. Right in front of him but out of his reach. Impossible to hit. To hold. To touch. To find. He brought down the rock with a wordless cry of frustration. Of determination. 

The crystal cracked. The world cracked. Gravity worked again in a sudden, dizzying rush that left Cloud scrambling for a grip. He grabbed Sephiroth, just like he had before. Grabbed him with all the strength he had. Held tight to bare skin and silver hair and _where was the rest of him_ —  
_where was—_

They fell. They’d fallen before. Had they always been—  
no, he stood once, stood and— 

The ground was good. It hurt, it worked, it was _real,_ this was _real,_ he was—  
  
There was an eye inside the ice. He grabbed Sephiroth. Hair, arm, body, anything. Grabbed and dragged, eyes away, eyes on the ground, looking for—  
looking—  
  
Sephiroth was dead weight.   
_Can’t be dead can’t be._

Cloud looked. Forced his eyes up off the ground. Stumbled and dropped to his knees, the hard ice gouging bloody tracks through his skin. He could see the column of Sephiroth’s throat, bent awkward and painful by Cloud’s grip on his hair. Could see the _things, not legs, those aren’t—  
__He can’t be dead._

Cloud turned his eyes down to the ice. Staggered to his feet. Dragged him along. Tore his bare feet. Tore Sephiroth, probably. That was fine. Better hurt than dead. Better than alone. Better dead than alone. Better dead than—

He dragged Sephiroth away, and did not look back as the world fell apart.

* * *

  
The enemy’s long hair freezes to the ground as it’s dragged through the ice by the animal desperation of the yellow haired man. Its legs are not legs. It should be dead. 

Ruby sees, though it doesn’t understand. Ruby angers, though it cannot draw the connection. Death is devouring the mother of stone all around. Ruby wakes. Ruby should have awakened long ago.

* * *

Cloud slipped. Fell. Rose again. His face split open against the sharp shards of ice as he stumbled. His hands, his knees, his hands— bloody, bleeding, failing. 

He tried.  
_It’s never enough._

The world crumbled with a deafening crashing of ice and stone. The ground fell away. 

Sephiroth didn’t hold him back as Cloud clung to any piece of him he could reach with frozen hands, broken hands, bloody—

The deafening scream of Something enormous, Something _right there_ swallowed him. Something impossible. And then—   
_No—_

Then the lifestream—

The lifestream, swallowing him, tearing, rending—

Better dead than the lifestream. They were not dead. He held tight as Sephrioth’s hair went wild around them, unfurling in the acid of planet’s blood. 

They both burned. No breath, so no screams. No death, so no end.

He could have given in. He could have let go and tenderly dissolved. But he feels it, dimly, through their connection. Like he felt it before. Through his fingers, his hands, his body, wherever they touch. The pieces of Sephiroth the lifestream is gripping. The way it unravels him. Unspools the very essence of him. With a dedicated attention it does not show Cloud. Cloud is only burning because he is flesh. Sephiroth, it will—  
It—  
It wants to unmake him and—  
It should, but—  
But Sephiroth—

He holds tighter, cemented against destruction only by a desperate protectiveness. All he has…

Hands do not hold him back. Something else does. Something inhuman but solid. Not a hand.

_Those aren’t legs—_

It doesn’t matter. It holds him back. By threads they hang together.

  
There is nothing else. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _“There’s something human that has to do with time and space and being who I am that is in progress and always will be in progress. [...] Who I am, on different days [...] depends on different aspects of my past.”_  
>  — **John Edgar Wideman,** The Stacks Chat: John Edgar Wideman

“Woah!” The dark-haired man beamed, gazing up and around at the entourage before him. “What a welcome!”   
  
He stood on a dusty mesa in the middle of the unnatural desert, the bloated silhouette of Midgar rising out of the dust at his back. Before him a hundred guns glinted. A hundred masked troopers. The thunder of helicopters.

“Sorry, guys.” The man shook his head as he spoke, his tone colored with a laugh. Like a sweet joke he’d remembered. “I’ve got places to be today. So I’m going to have to take a rain check on dying.”

When he laughed, his right eye shone red. And when he moved, it was like there were a thousand of him. Like he was everywhere. Like he wasn’t there at all. Like there was only and had only ever been the blood in the dust and the screams of dying men. 

Only the helicopter, smoking through the grey air on its way back to Midgar, marked that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.

Zack just grinned after its faltering flight. Around him bodies steamed and dissolved into green light.

“See you soon, old friends.” 

He lifted the Buster sword back onto his back with an easy swing and started walking again. Steady and confident. There was no need to hurry.

He was, for once in his life, completely in control.

* * *

“How can you be sure?”

Aerith was in motion. Walking, pacing, just on the edge of panic.

“We blew up a reactor in Midgar,” Tifa soothed, her hands outstretched. “It couldn’t have reached the Northern Crater.”

_ ‘The terrorist organization Avalanche’s unprovoked attacks continue, worsening a global crisis as what can only be described as ‘giant beasts’ continue their paths of destruction across the globe.’  _ The television added helpfully.

Blurry images of impossibly large monsters hovered where usually there would be a human face; in the ‘most wanted’ section of the screen.

“They’re turning us into goddamn  _ scapegoats! _ ” Barret roared, but not even Aeirth— their newest member by far, reacted. His rage was righteous. Tifa shared it, though with different flavors of emotion. From the looks on the faces around the room, they were all feeling it.

“What are they,” Jessie asked, her hand gripping the top edge of her armor. Below those gloves her knuckles must have been white from how tight she was holding. “How can they say it was us when no one even knows what they are?”

“They can say whatever they want, Jessie.” Tifa spat, and flinched a little at the acid in her voice. She should be feeling… Something else. Not venomous. Not strong and angry. They’d killed people today. They’d ended lives. Even if they hadn’t summoned monsters. 

Aerith’s hand lay on her arm. Still outstretched. Soft and warm and calming. You’d never guess this petite woman had joined up with an eco-terrorist group. Would never guess she was strong enough to have healed Tifa when she’d been certain the fall from the reactor had broken her neck. Flower Patch or no flowerpatch.

“Maybe it’s the planet,” Aerith offered after a moment. “Like Barret says. She’s dying.”

“Oh? What are you thinking? Defense system?” Barret asked, crossing his massive gun arm under his human bicep as he answered his own question. The chamber of his gun arm had to be hot, Tifa thought with a veil of frustration clouding her reality. He’d been hammering round after round of empty chambers to vent his anger.

“That… would sort of make sense?” Biggs offered. “Though it doesn’t explain what triggered them to wake up.”

“Maybe Shinra finally hurt the planet bad enough,” Wedge slumped in his chair, gazing sadly out at the cramped secret room they called their base. “But whatever happened, the fact is…”

“They’ve turned everyone against us.” Barret said grimly. “Doesn’t matter what we were trying to do. Only what Shinra says we were.”

“So,” Tifa rolled her shoulders back slowly as she spoke, trying to be calm. Trying to be brave. “What are we going to do about it?”

“First things first,” Barret was scowling, his expression tight behind his sunglasses. “We get Marlene to safety.”

“Then what?” Jessie asked, more eager than despondent. She was hard to get down. Hard to repress.

“Keep doing what we’ve been doing.” Barret unfolded his arms. Pumped his gun arm once, fierce and firm. “Trying to stop those monsters from ruining the planet!”

“But they’re huge,” Wedge objected. “Literally huge!”

“Not  _ those _ monsters,” Barret pointed sharply upwards, towards the ‘rotten pizza’ of the plate. “The Shinra!”

“I can take Marlene to my mother’s house,” Aerith offered, her voice alive with hope. “She should be safe there.”

_ Nothing’s this easy,  _ Tifa thought, her heart pounding.  _ Nothing’s this easy. We’re not going to be able to do it. Not really. _

_ There’s no such thing as heroes, no matter how badly I want one. No matter how badly I want to be one. _

She was not surprised. When it all went to hell. When Aerith bit the Turk’s hand to scream that Marlene was safe, only to be slapped silent and dragged away from them. When the bombs went off. When the plate fell. When her friends...  
  
Tifa watched her hometown burn on a normal day. Watched her father die on what had been a quiet afternoon. Stood in the falling ashes of her home and waited for the nightmare to stop until anger overtook disbelief.  
  
She’d failed in her attempt to fight back.  
  
She’d been rescued.   
No one else had been.

She and Barret survived the falling plate.   
No one else did.

More than half of Avalanche wiped out in a moment. Biggs, Wedge, Jessie… Snuffed out in seconds. Out of her hands, out of her control, no matter that she’d fought, no matter that she’d stood her ground, no matter all she’d trained. If Barret had died too—

“Fuck.” He was whispering, shaking, staring back at the twisted metal. 

He’d screamed it first. Screamed and raged and fired his gun up at the suddenly empty sky. But the longer they stood there… The longer the sudden awful silence after the awful screeching roar of tearing metal… The quieter he’d become as well.

Tifa had only stared, remembering Nibelheim. Had only silently lifted her knuckles to her mouth and bitten down, silencing the ungodly wail that wanted to rise out of her. She shouldn’t be thinking of then. She should be— It should be the others she was thinking of, not… She’d killed people too, she should— 

“What do we do?” She whispered, wishing she knew. “Biggs… Wedge… Jessie, they’re—”

Barret only stared out into the rubble, silent at last in the face of the loss. Not just their friends. A whole sector… Everyone at home, at work, out in the streets... Every person. Every child. If Marlene hadn’t gone to see Aerith’s mother—

If Barret had died—

“We’re still alive.” Barret said into the dead and dusty air. Not his usual snarl or roar. His voice was quiet. Rumbling through his huge frame. “They did this to stop us. They did this to show everyone they killed us. To wipe their hands.”

“You still want to fight, then?” Tifa asked, clenching her fist tighter to try to keep it from shaking any worse than it was. 

“I don’t want to,” Barret said, glaring upwards at the smoke-filled sky. “I have to. This is gunna be Marlene’s world. I’m not going to let it stay like this. For her sake if nothing else.”

_ You’re Marlene’s world _ , Tifa wanted to tell him, thinking of her dead father. Thinking of every moment she’d missed her family. Thinking of losing her mother at Marlene’s age. So much loss…

She didn’t say it. She turned her gaze upwards, towards the plate. Towards the Shinra.

“What about you?” Barret said, flat and angry in a way that was chilling to hear from him. “You gunna give up now?”

Back in Nibelheim, teenaged and facing the loss of everything, Tifa had glared up at a reactor and forsaken everything she had left to fight an unstoppable monster. 

Now she glared up at the towering monster behind the smoke of a fallen plate. She reached for the rage that had fueled her all those years ago.

“If nothing else,” Tifa said at last, “They have Aerith. Even if we can’t stop Shinra, I want to help her.”

Barret nodded his agreement, sharp and quick. But they stayed in place for a long moment, gazing out silently over the rubble. The disfigured remnants of almost all they had left. 

If Barret had died.   
If Marlene had died.

Tifa would have had nothing left at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _[...] overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt [...] made something worth making. [...] Something human._  
>  ― Seth Godin, **Art is What we Call It**

“Subject has noticed the disaster, even isolated as we are.” 

He says it aloud, addressing only the recorder he keeps in his pocket. Anyone else who may here is merely fortunate to have caught the insight.

Inside the glass, his subject has a hand over her mouth. Her back against the glass. He cannot hear her, but he sees her body move with sobs.

Time is such a strange thing. He noticed it more vividly when Sephiroth was a boy than ever before in his life, but he feels it now. The discordant space between the last time he held her and this moment. How strange that this creature ran wild in the world, out of his sight but never his mind. How odd she stayed free so long only to at last be his again, so changed by time while he and his lab remain as they have always been.

Impartially inching closer to perfection with no regard for the passing of such trivial things as years.

“Any sign of the rest of them?” He asked the room at large, moving towards his specimen containment control panel. He’d thought of a lovely joke to play on them all, and found himself looking forward to it. He loved a good laugh as much as any man, he supposed.

“Sources suggest they’re on their way into the complex, sir.” One of his lackeys stuttered.   
  
Marvelous, Hojo thought. He lifted a hand to mask his grin, chuckling to himself at the thought.   
  
“Fetch number thirteen,” He ordered. “We’re going to put on a little presentation for our guests.”

* * *

It was hard, seeing other parents. Seeing folks whose houses were still standing. Whose worlds were still upright.   
  
Barret didn’t like to feel jealous. It was easier to feel mad.   
  
Not at this Elmyra lady, though. Not only had Aerith been grabbed by the Shinra, here was his little girl, safe and sound while their home burned under the rubble.

Marlene was tucked into a warm bed, with a pretty pink quilt like she should have had all along. Still sleeping with her hand still close to her mouth, though she’d finally stopped sucking on her thumb a few months ago.   
  
“Damn,” Barret whispered, standing by Dyne’s— No—  **his** little girl’s bedside. “Damn, damn, damn.”   
  
His gun arm didn’t shake like his real one did. It was good she was a deep sleeper, and that Elmyra and Tifa seemed to have been in deep conversation.

_ ‘It’s my fault. I’m the one who got Aerith all wrapped up in this.’ _ _  
_ _ ‘I know Aerith doesn’t think that, young lady.’ _

Barret clenched his jaw. Pulled his sunglasses off in his damn shaky hand. Stared down at Marlene with an ache in his chest that never went away. Every time he left her, she was in danger. But if he didn’t fight for the planet— for  **her** planet. For her future…

He’d spent so much of his life waiting for someone else to do the right thing.   
  
“Hey,” He said, as soft as he could. Only she got to hear this side of him— his wild handful of a daughter, with her sweet smiles and her eager-to-help attitude. “Marlene. I’m—”

“Daddy!” She gasped at once, shoving herself up out of bed without even fully opening her eyes. 

He caught her up in a hug without thinking. Wrapped his arm around her. Almost wrapped both arms before he remembered. Settled for one. She was so small, it was no trouble. She was so small…   
  
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Barret said. His voice was hitching, damn it all. His voice was hitching, and he couldn’t hug his little girl tighter without hurting her, but he wanted to… To carry her away, somewhere the Shinra would never threaten her again. “I’m so glad.”   
  
“Don’t cry, daddy” Marlene lifted a hand to his cheek, rubbing the wrong way against his stubble to clean his tears away. Uncomfortable, and a little ticklish, and very rough. Marlene, tiny and still so young, his perfect daughter, frowned up at his tears.   
  
“You really need to shave.” She told him, still sleepy and bewildered, and alive  **alive** , with the whole plate burying hundreds where she’d been hours before.   
  
Barret wasn’t too proud to cry. Not for his family. He held Marlene close, choking on sobs, and remembering Elmyra’s words like a knife in his side.

_ “How could you leave a child alone like that?” _

After today… It couldn’t happen again.

Downstairs again, Marlene darted straight to Tifa. Something about Aerith having asked all sorts of questions about her. About what kind of person she was. He let her go. Tifa was safe. Marlene was safe. That was…

That was the best they had.   
  
“Hey,” he said to Elmyra, while Tifa crouched to listen to Marlene. “I have a favor to ask. Could you watch Marlene? Just for a while longer.”

“Where are you headed to?” Elmyra asked, a hand on her hip and her eyes tense at the corners. Stress and sorrow. Barret knew them all too well. And her posture too. Protective, strong, stubborn… Myrna had looked like that sometimes. One woman against the world.   
  
“We’re gunna go get Aerith back.” Barret said. No cocksure bravado now. He didn’t feel like he had the energy for it. He had no one left to prove anything to. “And if we can, we’re gunna stop the Shinra all together. Before there’s nothing left to save.”

“Well,” Elmyra hesitated. 

She looked over to where Marlene had leaned in to whisper in Tifa’s ear. Barret winced in sympathy. Marlene whispers were… Well. She was five. It was basically a glorified wet willy.

“It’s no trouble,” Elmyra said at last. “But you promise me you’ll come back. If you have to fight, you have to fight. But you have to live for her sake.”

“Nothing’s going to stop me.” Barret said.

“Ready?” Tifa asked him, her eyes burning with a resolve that he’d thought for a moment the plate falling had wiped out.

“To ruin the Shinra’s day?” He asked, bending to pick Marlene up, hugging her sparrow’s weight to him once more before they left. “Always.”


End file.
